Future Tense Fiction: Welcome to the A.I. Haunted House
On this month\u2019s episode of Future Tense Fiction, host Maddie Stone talks to Janelle Shane about her short story \u201cThe Skeleton Crew.\u201d\nThe House of A.I. is a next-level haunted house: In it, a suite of advanced A.I.s read visitors\u2019 facial expressions to generate perfectly tailored scares. Or at least, that\u2019s what the marketing materials want you to believe. It turns out, the house is actually operated by a group of underpaid gig workers, tasked with posing as spooky A.I.s as they guide visitors through the mansion. When two gunmen sneak into the house in search of a famous rock artist who\u2019s there visiting, things go south quickly\u2014and everyone ends up really grateful for the humans behind the house\u2019s spooky machines.\nAfter the story, Maddie and Janelle discuss why the human workers behind A.I. are so often invisibilized\u2014and why you should be suspicious when a company oversells its tech.\nGuests: Janelle Shane is a research scientist. She writes about A.I. on her blog,\xa0aiweirdness.com, and she\u2019s also the author of\xa0You Look Like a Thing and I Love You.\nStory read by Kat Bohn\nPodcast production by Tiara Darnell\nYou can skip all the ads in Future Tense Fiction by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at\xa0slate.com/plus\xa0for just $15 for your first three months.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices